Matt J wrote:I don't see that at all. Nonin writes (in my opinion) controversial things at times but this article is not one of them.

Are you a part of a formal Zen tradition? There may be a disconnect between different teachings.

"We need to remember, however, that awakening is not a permanent event, that all of us, even those who have deeply awakened to our true nature and the nature of our relationship to the rest of the universe can fall into delusion in an instant and act badly, causing harm to ourselves and others."

"The law of cause and effect governs all our actions. No one can escape it, even the Zen Buddhist master who foolishly thinks that he or she is beyond it."

The impossibility of becoming free from karma, from samsara, sounds to me like denying nirvana. Saying that one is never permanently liberated means that the chain of dependent origination cannot be broken.

Would you say that Nonin's Zen is a teaching that promises no freedom, unlike other forms of Buddhism?

One is not irreversible until the 8th Bhumi [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhūmi_(Buddhism)[/url] which is the level corresponding to "nirvana". I don't think Nonin is denying anything, unless when folks use the term "Zen Buddhist Masters" they are saying that each of those masters is definitely a 8th-10th Bhumi Bodhisattvas or full Buddha. (and if they are saying that then that is probably a topic for another thread)

Edit: having read through the article and comments, it appears Nonin is quite active in responding to comments being made. You could ask him directly about this.

Last edited by uan on Sat Mar 02, 2013 7:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

That such terms as 'concern trolling' are so readily used in the Zen community suggests, at least to me, that Zen is not iconoclastic in nature.

I believe the term "concern trolling" is being misused. From Wikipedia:

A concern troll is a false flag pseudonym created by a user whose actual point of view is opposed to the one that the user claims to hold. The concern troll posts in Web forums devoted to its declared point of view and attempts to sway the group's actions or opinions while claiming to share their goals, but with professed "concerns". The goal is to sow fear, uncertainty and doubt within the group.

Unless of course we are questioning the motivations of many "regular" contributors to this and other threads.

What can I say about Nonin's Zen teaching? I have not sat with him nor trained with him (although I have sat with others in his lineage). Zen isn't something you say, it's something you do/are. So how can I say whether or not following his teaching leads to freedom or not?

There is a saying that "to have a child is to know the heart of a parent." Much of the confusion with Zen comes from not practicing Zen.

Astus wrote:Would you say that Nonin's Zen is a teaching that promises no freedom, unlike other forms of Buddhism?

The Great Way is not difficultIf only there is no picking or choosing--- Xin Xin Ming

Astus wrote:"The law of cause and effect governs all our actions. No one can escape it, even the Zen Buddhist master who foolishly thinks that he or she is beyond it."

The impossibility of becoming free from karma, from samsara, sounds to me like denying nirvana. Saying that one is never permanently liberated means that the chain of dependent origination cannot be broken.

I agree with this. I have taken issue with this statement before, but never made any headway with the argument.

The way I put it is that nirvana is forever. It is not something that comes and goes. Many people will say that that means it is 'permanent' and that nothing is permanent. I think this is a misunderstanding of permanence and impermanence. Something permanent is some essence or substance which doesn't change through time. Nirvana is for ever, but it is not some substance or essence which never changes.

For example, Dhammapada:

Hatred is never appeased by hatred in this world. By non-hatred alone is hatred appeased. This is a law eternal.

As to whether the Buddha is susceptible to karma - surely not. The 'flame is extinguished', there is no longer a separated entity or person to whom anything might occur.

Learn to do good, refrain from evil, purify the mind ~ this is the teaching of the Buddhas

What Nonin says in that article basically denies liberation and fails to use the teaching to the two truths.

He isn't denying liberation at all (he is saying that all of our realization is probably shallow though) - a person with awakening can still commit misdeeds (he labels it as people who have "deeply awakened to our true nature"). A person with true, deep awakening is not doing to commit any violations of the precepts at all (although they might mess up their taxes or something).

Nonin may not have meant it the way it appears to me, that's possible. Maybe "deeply awakened to our true nature" is just a superficial understanding of causality, or anything before the arya levels (i.e. actual insight into emptiness). And "No one can escape it" is not a doctrinal statement but rather a warning to the common people who may delude themselves with thoughts of transcendent enlightenment. I'm not excluding anything, it was simply strange at first.

"There is no such thing as the real mind. Ridding yourself of delusion: that's the real mind."(Sheng-yen: Getting the Buddha Mind, p 73)

It goes very close to nihilism in my view. This is not to say that Buddhists consciously or deliberately promote nihilism, but Buddism can easily fall into the trap of nihilism.

I don't accept the idea that 'everything is impermanent'. As said in the post above, I believe nirvana is for keeps, for ever. It is not changeable in the sense that things in the world are changeable. I accept the idea that every phenomenon, every manifest thing, is impermanent, including the apparent status of this or that 'zen master'. But some things are always so - they are always the case. Consider a logical law, for instance. It is always the case that 1<2. That is something which is not impermanent. As long as you can count, one is always less than two. If you wait a hundred billion years, it will still be the case.

So I think the notion of impermanence as a formula that applies to literally everything, is a dogma that leads to a nihilistic view.

Learn to do good, refrain from evil, purify the mind ~ this is the teaching of the Buddhas

Zen realization is shallow and easily overcome by the habits of our mind. As a result we have to keep practicing. There may be some deeply enlightened people in Zen now who have gone beyond this but they are not the people defiling the zendo.

kirtu wrote:Zen realization is shallow and easily overcome by the habits of our mind. As a result we have to keep practicing. There may be some deeply enlightened people in Zen now who have gone beyond this but they are not the people defiling the zendo.

Kirt

I hope you are wrong and it's certainly not what was taught by the great Chan masters right through to many modern ones, like Xu Yun, Seoncheol, etc.

kirtu wrote:Zen realization is shallow and easily overcome by the habits of our mind. As a result we have to keep practicing. There may be some deeply enlightened people in Zen now who have gone beyond this but they are not the people defiling the zendo.

I hope you are wrong and it's certainly not what was taught by the great Chan masters right through to many modern ones, like Xu Yun, Seoncheol, etc.

Enlightenment is not kensho and may not be satori. Take a look at the life of Xu Yun - he had very strong concentration (when he sat waiting for the potatoes to cook in his retreat hut for example - other retreatants on the mountain came over and two weeks had passed with him sitting) - I don't remember him recording kensho experiences but he himself said that he didn't attain enlightenment until later in life (more correctly - he was not satisfied until later in life that he had resolved the matter of life and death).

Real enlightenment is deep and permanent. Most Zen enlightenment is shallow and overcome by our mind habits (although if it's real, it too is permanent because it has transformed you at least a little).

kirtu wrote:Zen realization is shallow and easily overcome by the habits of our mind. As a result we have to keep practicing. There may be some deeply enlightened people in Zen now who have gone beyond this but they are not the people defiling the zendo.

I hope you are wrong and it's certainly not what was taught by the great Chan masters right through to many modern ones, like Xu Yun, Seoncheol, etc.

Enlightenment is not kensho and may not be satori. Take a look at the life of Xu Yun - he had very strong concentration (when he sat waiting for the potatoes to cook in his retreat hut for example - other retreatants on the mountain came over and two weeks had passed with him sitting) - I don't remember him recording kensho experiences but he himself said that he didn't attain enlightenment until later in life (more correctly - he was not satisfied until later in life that he had resolved the matter of life and death).

Real enlightenment is deep and permanent. Most Zen enlightenment is shallow and overcome by our mind habits (although if it's real, it too is permanent because it has transformed you at least a little).

jeeprs wrote:I don't accept the idea that 'everything is impermanent'. As said in the post above, I believe nirvana is for keeps, for ever.

If nirvāṇa is understood as the absence of causes for further involuntary rebirth, then "impermanence" does not really apply because nirvāṇa is not a thing, nor is it really caused. Causes are for phenomena that arise. Nirvāṇa is the absence of causes for rebirth. If those causes have been eliminated, the process of saṃsāra halts.

Not everyone agrees with this. In some strains of Mahāyāna thought, particularly the ekayāna, arhats are reborn outside the three realms and eventually must attain buddhahood.

jeeprs wrote:It goes very close to nihilism in my view. This is not to say that Buddhists consciously or deliberately promote nihilism, but Buddism can easily fall into the trap of nihilism.

I don't accept the idea that 'everything is impermanent'. As said in the post above, I believe nirvana is for keeps, for ever. It is not changeable in the sense that things in the world are changeable. I accept the idea that every phenomenon, every manifest thing, is impermanent, including the apparent status of this or that 'zen master'. But some things are always so - they are always the case. Consider a logical law, for instance. It is always the case that 1<2. That is something which is not impermanent. As long as you can count, one is always less than two. If you wait a hundred billion years, it will still be the case.

So I think the notion of impermanence as a formula that applies to literally everything, is a dogma that leads to a nihilistic view.

Impermanence is permanently empty, not conceivable by concepts. If trying to conceive existence and non-existence, then this is nihilism.

NAMO AMITABHANAM MO A DI DA PHAT (VIETNAMESE)NAMO AMITUOFO (CHINESE)Linjii―Listen! Those of you who devote yourselves to the Dharma must not be afraid of losing your bodies and your lives―

Huseng wrote:If nirvāṇa is understood as the absence of causes for further involuntary rebirth, then "impermanence" does not really apply because nirvāṇa is not a thing, nor is it really caused. Causes are for phenomena that arise. Nirvāṇa is the absence of causes for rebirth. If those causes have been eliminated, the process of saṃsāra halts.

This is how I think of it. For me it seems helpful to think of the state of nirvana as like reaching a boundary condition in physics.

Unfortunately, Zen practice tends to accept things as they are rather than as we wish them to be. Zen teachers don't fart sunshine and urinate rainbows, either. Being an accomplished teacher doesn't mean that one is a sinless, Christ-like figure. And having failings doesn't mean that one is not an accomplished teacher. As always, the truth is somewhere in the middle.

dzogchungpa wrote:Well, as I said, Nonin is just too subtle for me, but he seems to be saying that one can be an "accomplished Zen Buddhist teacher" and still be as contemptible as Sasaki, and I just can't accept that.

The Great Way is not difficultIf only there is no picking or choosing--- Xin Xin Ming

Matt J wrote:Unfortunately, Zen practice tends to accept things as they are rather than as we wish them to be. Zen teachers don't fart sunshine and urinate rainbows, either. Being an accomplished teacher doesn't mean that one is a sinless, Christ-like figure. And having failings doesn't mean that one is not an accomplished teacher. As always, the truth is somewhere in the middle.

I've argued the counter with Nonin and others online.

Why? Because realization itself, even minor realization, keeps one from committing egregious, harmful acts. Minor realization itself (so kensho) is powerful enough to not exactly prevent this but dampens it in a way. So after a person commits a bad act their conscious is activated acutely and they are unlikely to do so again anytime soon. Overtime, realization builds and those bad acts have to diminish and stop.

With a person who is supposed to be deeply enlightened, really deeply enlightened, this can't happen. Nonin is basically saying that no one today is that deeply enlightened (or he really is saying that enlightenment is temporary and I don't buy that). He is saying that delusion is deep and pervasive. So with Sasaki, these people knew what they were doing was wrong. That they repeated it over years and decades shows that their so-called enlightenment was worthless to anyone but themselves.

kirtu wrote: Nonin is basically saying that no one today is that deeply enlightened (or he really is saying that enlightenment is temporary and I don't buy that). He is saying that delusion is deep and pervasive. Kirt

I don't know if he is saying that, or intending to say that, but it's an important point - is there anyone living that deeply enlightened today? Personally I think that delusion is deep and pervasive. When you can be on the 7th bhumi and still suffer from obscurations, when that is an incredibly advanced stage (how many people here are even on the first bhumi? Raise your hands. I'm not) just offers evidence of how deep delusions can be.